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To state the obvious….I’m a bad blogger. I know it. You know it. Maybe if I stopped stressing about being a good blogger I’d stop being such a horrendous one. Ah well. I need to not care so much about things, because when I do they consequentially don’t get done.

My piano teacher once told me I was a perfectionist. And it’s true. I’ve just learned to ignore it most of the time and choose imperfection. It’s funny: if I make a conscious choice to let things turn out the way they do and not trash it when it doesn’t compare to God, heaven, and the garden of Eden, they seem to turn out better. Probably not in reality. But my attitude changes and I snicker at my mistakes and let my creativity be human.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone too far the other way and have started not to care enough. Possibly. But for now it’s better than the alternative.

So maybe I need to bring this approach to my blog. Just write. And let it be what it is.

It’s been a long week of minimal social interaction. For real. A fifteen minute interview Tuesday and youth group on Wednesday. And no work. Cody doesn’t count…and phone calls don’t really either. Although in my desperate need for a social life I can truly say that an hour long phone call with my mom is the most girl time I’ve had since she visited a month ago.

I realized about 5 minutes ago that it’s all starting to get to me. I very suddenly reached a point where I began having fake conversations with my lesbian neighbors and started making the facial expressions and hand gestures like it was real…while I walked in circles in my very small kitchen trying to decide if I was hungry and what I should do. Which lead into a tuneless song about Harry Potter while I went to fetch the book from my room. The people on friends, Harry Potter and I have our own little club for 10 hours every day while Cody’s at work. It’s great. Until I break off from the group to obsessively check craigslist, sitter city, and care for new job postings. Nanny websites are my new facebook.

And then I woke up from my reverie of fake neighborly conversations and realized that these crazy moods surprisingly don’t happen all that often and I should take advantage and write something weird and entertaining that I’ll later regret.

I’m pretty sure this is the fastest I’ve ever written a blog post. Also the longest I’ve ever allowed my paragraphs to be. I hate fat paragraphs.

my apologies for being a lousy blogger. but i have a life (code for nothing smart enough in my brain to write about). so get over it. however I will try to appease your gallimaufry withdrawals with this little photo update:

Cody was kind enough to drive me all the way to Montana to see my family and attend a dear friend’s wedding

Cody turned 21…finally. i no longer have to buy his beer. You’d think being his sole provider of beer would be a wonderful advantage as his wife. Unfortunately I’m too nice for that. Which makes it simply a pain.

This brave 6 year old had an successful 8 hr heart surgery and obviously came through strong and proud…and no longer purple.

We brought this annoyance home. I promptly fell in love right before the realization that Cody is simply too allergic for a happy ending.

reading The Help per suggestion of my Aunt while enjoying my cleaned and unchristmased living room…contemplating a real mattress-above-floor-bed thanks to my Daddy…eating grapefruit and not succeeding at sticky control…attempting to sit as close as possible to the fireplace and not get burned.

as a kid i read a ton. then i grew up and got busy and didn’t read nearly as much. every time i intend to change that i run into this problem. i have no idea what to read. i immediately think of 5 children’s books i have always wanted to read, but although i have a firm belief that well written children’s books are worth reading at any age, i still need to act my age every once in a while and read a grown up book. but i have no idea where to start. i’m not overly fond of reading popular novels that don’t have any aura of ‘classic’ about them. so please no twilight. but sometimes the best true writers and artists are the most difficult to find…or pick out from among the popular ones. so please….ideas anyone?

it requires a couple tears. ben and jerry’s. encouraging husband words. hot chocolate at the end.

it’s that day.

you know what i mean. you’ve had that day happen before.

it starts when you’re overly emotional and crying in the car for no reason. you arrive at school to pick up favorite kiddos whom you’re not completely sure you’re emotionally equipped to handle at the moment. parallel park in a tiny spot. open your phone to text your husband an apology for being a witch, glance up. smoke is coming out of your beloved car’s hood.

pick the kids up from their classes. walk to the car…in a hurry to see if you can find out what’s wrong before the husband’s shift starts. oh wait…potty emergency…back to school.

run back to the car.

driving with eyes peeled for an auto shop. your favorite helper in the front seat sees it first. ‘auto body shop’ parallel park in a tiny spot between a large truck and an orange vespa. you suddenly realize this is an auto body shop…not repair. feel really stupid and call your husband.

follow nice man’s advice and take it to an auto repair shop 2 blocks away.

kids: ‘how long will it take? will the engine blow up if you drive too much? can we get ice cream?’

they look and say you’re radiator’s cracked. a lot.

kids to auto shop lady: ‘excuse me, how long will it take, maximum, to fix it? like ten hours?’

‘you shouldn’t drive. it will cost lots of money. it won’t be finished today.’

‘so can we get ice cream?’

you make decision to spend lots of money fixing your only car without your husband to approve. nerve wracking at best.

you call their father. ‘my car broke down. do you want us to come get us or should we take a taxi home?…….ok. meet us at ben & jerry’s. i’m so sorry about this.’

you give a piggy back all the way ice cream and wonder how you will get home. how you will bring your husband dinner on his break. how you will get to the bank tomorrow to finish buying that car for him that you thought you would have by last monday.

the dad comes. home. disney princess doll exhibit. hear about the justin bieber concert. leave for soccer…and get dropped off to rent a car to make life possible for the next day. hit traffic. for an hour. barely make the car rental place before they close. rent a car.

drive home through traffic. large cities are such a joy sometimes. watch a stupid episode of a stupid show to unwind. make dinner. drive fancy rental to your husband’s work. explain everything that happened.

best part of the day: ‘good job…you did the right thing.’

eat really great chicken you threw together. be really impressed with yourself.

lately Cody has been encouraging me to get back into writing, which makes me like him alot. but it’s kind of daunting. and it’s sort of that thing where as soon as i think about writing my brain goes blank and i don’t have any intelligent thoughts. that’s why i wrote about nonintelligent blueberries and vacuums.

therefore it is your duty as faithful gallimaufry readers to give me a subject to write about. anything. deep…undeep. boring…unboring. lifeish…unlifeish. theologyish…untheologyish. see? as long as it’s generally appropriate and such.

this is very embarrassing. (what’s also embarrassing is i can never remember how to spell ’embarrass’…..ever.)

these weeknights when Cody is gone to work for 9 hours can be very long. i try hard to be productive and do errands, cook, clean, write letters, draw, take pictures, read, watch Bones. but we don’t know a soul here so sometimes it’s lonely.

i fully realized the extent of my loneliness when one day i was in WinCo (our super creepy, super cheap grocery store) and recognized an employee from Bed Bath and Beyond also doing her grocery shopping. it’s a little scary when something like that can make your day.

anyways. it evening and I was trying to amuse myself without facebook or Bones when someone knocked on my door. i thought…’what the heck?’ and looked through the peep hole. i guess people can see your eye when you look through peepholes cuz this girl on the landing waved at me and smiled super big. i thought…’do i know her? she’s cute. she’s wearing a hippie skirt. she has a great smile.’ i had to ponder it for a moment before i was sure that i didn’t know her, that she was not scary, and that i should open the door.

she was a sales girl from some vacuum company and started asking if her peoples could come clean the carpet in one room for free and show me their amazing product. but then she interrupted herself to say she liked my dress.

‘instead of putting an ad on tv for 6 million dollars we’d rather just come clean your carpets for you! it’s super cool…it has this dealy that does this and can suck crap out of your carpet super awesomely and bla blablablabla bla!!!!!! and oh my goodness what are those cool things on your wall those are so cool!!!’

so. i’m not great at saying no. i tried. a few times. but she was nice. and wearing a hippie skirt and she liked the funky stuff on my walls so my ‘no’ failed miserably.

so later this guy comes with his boxes of cool vacuum stuff. and i’m realizing that this fellow is going to be in my house with me alone, cleaning my carpets for like an hour and that my husband is really not going to think that’s cute. in fact he might be pretty mad. oops. but i was stuck with it. and the vaccum was actually kinda cool.

i did try very hard to keep busy. i didn’t want to akwardly sit there and watch him vacuum. so i did dishes…very slowly…baked cookies…very slowly…froze bananas…very slowly…ate granola…very slowly…drank tea. alot of tea.

but as time passed and the guy was still cleaning and explaining many incredibly wonderful things about his vacuum, i realized that my husband was going to get home from work before mr vacuum was done. and i was a little panicy. i mean…i was going to tell him anyways, but it seemed like it’d be better to just confess, than to have him come home from work and find this dude vacuuming his house. so i frantically texted him a quick text explaining the situation with many ‘sorrysorrysorrys’ in it.

my man got home and the guy finished and packed up. it wasn’t so bad. but afterwards cody was not so happy with me and gave me a lecture about saying no to people. it was deserved…but my lesson was learned while pretending to be super into the science behind a vacuum.

i did conquer one thing though…..i didn’t buy the vacuum. at least there’s that. and the livingroom carpet’s clean.